Different kinds of story arcs

Books are different from TV. We know this. The difference I'm thinking of today is in the way their story arcs work. In books (the ones that aren't part of a series, I mean), there's a little bit of a problem. Maybe not everyone has this problem, but I do. I constantly find myself wanting to hurry up and finish the book, just so that I can see how the story ends. But when I finish it, I realize that it's all over. There is no more. Not only is the story over, but the characters and setting are all gone, too. And then I get sad.

This is an area where TV wins. Or where TV series win, at least. The joy of a good TV series is that the viewer gets a satisfying story arc every week, but with the added bonus of not losing everything else at the end of a given story. The characters and setting stick around for another arc next week, with the added bonus of a little more backstory than before.

This quality can make TV, as well as series novels, very attractive. It makes for strong relationships between viewers and characters (I say between, but it's quite one sided) while providing lots of satisfying conclusions to stories.

Two reasons why I want to join the EU

From time to time, I wish Canada could defect from North America and become a member of the European Union. There are two reasons for this. Number one is that I'd like to get out of NAFTA. Number two is that I'd like to be able to participate in Eurovision voting. Yes, that's right: Eurovision and NAFTA in the same post.

Distant families and close TV

I re-watched the season finale of Torchwood today. I actually cried a little when two of the characters died. It strikes me as odd that I should cry for fictional characters. It seems especially odd when I stack it up next to my inability to cry when one of my uncles died. It's been nearly a year and I haven't cried for him yet, but I can cry over fictional characters. Rationally, that seems very strange.

Here's the problem: emotions aren't rational. I barely knew my uncle. He lived on the other side of the country and I only ever met him and handful of times. The Torchwood characters, on the other hand, were a fixture in my life for two years. Over the course of two seasons and twenty six episodes, I learned about their hopes, dreams, histories and problems. They were presented like real human beings. It doesn't matter that their lives revolved around fighting aliens. It's the human element that makes science fiction feasible. Personalities that we can believe in and identify with allow us to suspend our disbelief in other areas. In short, the characters in Torchwood became less abstract to me than a real member of my family.

I can't decide whether this is problematic or not. My knee jerk reaction is to be a little aghast that I have more emotion towards fiction than reality. But then, maybe the problem is that in the standard North American WASP family, there just isn't much emotion going around. Maybe it's life that's the problem. Maybe it's a good thing that TV is training me to feel more.

Crying in video stores

Another thing I want to study:

Lots of people watch movies when they feel sad. Where do those people get movies from? Pre-internet, unless they wanted to watch something they already owned, they'd need to go to the video store. That means sad people in video stores. Even if they aren't crying, it should be possible to see who is more upset than the average.

Questions, then: In the past, how often would an average video store get a crier? A sad non-crier? Has the frequency of sad video store customers changed? Has it gone up? Down? If down, where have the sad video watchers gone? Or are people finding different coping mechanisms?

Problems: I don't know how I could possibly dig up information on incidences of video store criers and sad non-criers in the past. I can't imagine that anyone has kept records on that sort of thing. Perhaps it's time for a literature review.

Conventional media as curator

I'm going to draw a parallel. If I want to see art, there are two things I can do. I could go online and do a search for "art." I'd get over a billion hits (check it yourself if you want to make sure). I'd get to sift through a whole world of art, opinions about art, art history... (Suspend your comments for a moment, if you will, about the non-originalness of the art online. I know that I won't get to see the real painting. But that's not the point of my argument. Forget about it.) My other option would be to go to an art gallery. Doing that would give me access to a limited amount of art, filtered through the perception of a third party. For it to show up in an art gallery, someone has to curate it. I get to look at what they think is interesting.

I think that it would be good for conventional media to operate that way. Let's have an example: Before the internet, it was alright to show one TV show in one country and a different one somewhere else. That's still how it happens, but I'm not sure it's okay any more. If a TV show airs in the UK but not in Canada, and I want to watch it but have no legal way to do so, what am I supposed to do? Am I meant to just not watch it at all? Or do I wait for the DVD to come out and then break the encryption? Or subscribe to digital cable for one show? That's no fun at all. It means that as much as I may want to watch something, there's no sensible, legal way to do it. Why don't they show me what I want to watch on TV? The standard channels only have so much space in their schedules. They have to make decisions about what they think will be successful. They don't have the resources to cater just to me. And yes, I know I could just get BBC Americas or something, but it comes with a large cable package. In order to get one show that I want, I'd have to sign on for a whole lot more. Not very sensible if I don't actually want to spend my free time in front of the TV. So, there's no easy way for conventional media to get my viewership without alienating another large chunk of the viewing public. There simply isn't enough time in the day to accommodate me.

There is, however, another medium that can target individuals quite well. Guess what it is. Did you say The Internet? You're quite right. The internet has all the space necessary to show everyone just what they want to see. That's pretty great. But there are some problems. For one thing, with enough space to make everyone happy, it's sometimes hard to find what you want. Take the art analogy above. A billion hits for the word "art." I'd have to narrow my search down quite a bit to find something that I actually wanted to look at. But that's another problem. Going to the art gallery, or watching TV, or listening to the radio gives me the opportunity to find new things. I might not have known that I'd like it, but when someone else presents it to me, wow! It's a whole new world.

We've established the strengths of conventional media and new media. Conventional media is good at filtering things, at presenting new things to viewers, at curating. The internet, on the other hand, is far better at distribution. You can actually fit all those individual tastes onto the internet. I think that the answer, then, is to make the two work together. Conventional media should become an arbiter of taste, a more curatorial venture, and should leave distribution to new media. Both media could play to their own strengths instead of the constant fear and competition that the current model provokes. Wouldn't that be nice?

Books are more democratic than television

I just watched an episode of jPod. As the credits rolled, I thought to myself "I really need to get out and buy that book." Immediately after thinking that, though, I realized that reading the book would ruin the show, because I'd know how it ends. But then, my reasoning went, Douglas Coupland is such a fantastic writer. There's probably way more in the text of jPod than there is in the show. After all, I love Douglas Coupland books for their tiny details. And tiny details don't show up very well in TV and movies. If they make it at all, they take a backseat to larger points of plot or mise en scene.

That's what makes books so much more democratic. When reading a book, everything is equal. Everything is just another set of words on a page. Tiny details get the same love that large events get. They have to, because everything comes in sequential order. Things that could happen simultaneously on a screen are forced to go one by one in books. And that's fantastic. It means that the tiny details work. It means that I really get to think about what the room looks like, if that's something that matters. Instead of simply seeing, the sequential nature of books forces me to process, to acknowledge, and to understand.

TV on the internet v. TV on TV

I sat down in front of my TV last night to -amazingly enough- watch some TV. Most of the time, I use the TV for watching movies or playing games. I get most of my TV from the internet. The CBC normally gets my viewership by posting episodes on their website. This, I think, works better for everyone. What's so good about it? The CBC gets a more precise impression of where their viewers are coming from. When I pluck waves out of the air with an antenna, the CBC has no idea that I'm watching. On the other hand, when I click through to the jPod website, for example, it is quite clear that I'm watching. There's a useful corollary to that, too. CBC can more precisely tell their advertisers how many people are viewing, and who those people are. That's quite good. Clearly, the CBC benefits from me watching TV on the internet. What, then, do I gain? I gain flexibility and self determination. I gain the ability to watch shows when I want to, instead of when the CBC chooses to air them. That's useful if I'm not home when the show first airs. I'm much less likely to follow a show if I have to drop everything to watch it. The other major gain is that the show doesn't get interrupted by advertisements. I'd much rather view banner ads on the side or top of a website than ads in the middle of a show.

If TV on the internet is so good, why am I even framing this as a competition? TV is, at this point, still better than TV on the internet in some respects. For one, if I were to watch jPod on the CBC website, the resolution would be far worse than the TV version. Not only that, but the episode would stream, and streaming is inherently jumpy. Also, if I happened to be home on a Tuesday night, it would make far more sense to watch the broadcast, since episodes aren't uploaded until after the show has aired. Problematic. But not just problematic for the viewer. Even though the CBC benefits in many ways from making shows available on their website, there's still a major problem: the cost of bandwidth. Streaming a 45 minute long show takes bandwidth. Bandwidth costs money. They now pay not only to broadcast the show on TV, but also to stream it on demand on their website.

Some questions, then, about the good and bad of TV on the internet. Would I rather watch a low res, slightly jumpy version of a show, or have the story constantly interrupted by advertisements? Why, if the CBC is willing to make shows available online, do they not choose a better distribution method? Would it be so wrong to set up a CBC sanctioned torrent? Such a solution might cut bandwidth costs for the CBC, and it would certainly give viewers a better viewing experience. At the same time, would regular viewers be willing to spend time waiting for a show to download, in exchange for better picture quality? Do regular viewers even bother to watch TV on the internet?

If I value flexibility and self determination in my TV viewing, why did I sit down last night and watch TV on TV? Simply, I was home, I had nothing to do, I wanted something lazy to occupy my evening with. So I turned on the TV. I find, though, that the more committed I am to a show, the more I end up watching it on the internet. Broadcast TV, on the other hand, is admirably suited to casual viewing. Plus, commercial breaks are a great time to go and get a fresh cup of tea.